A Reform-Tory deal

Farage says: never. Tories say: maybe.

In Conservative circles, it’s the debate that dare not speak its name: should they ‘unite the right’ and join Reform? Nigel Farage wants to kill the Tories, says Kemi Badenoch: she’d never countenance a deal. Robert Jenrick, who has never stopped campaigning for the leadership, has been less emphatic. But on today’s polls, it’s academic: Reform would have a landslide and the Tories would be reduced to a rump of about two dozen.

Polls come and go, but the Tory mood is darkening quickly. The floor that used to keep Tory support above 20pc has vanished, and their concern is more in survival than victory. A Reform challenge meant Jacob Rees-Mogg lost his seat so he can speak openly - and, in the film, he does. I ask him about a Tory-Reform deal.

“Pride cometh before a destruction, a naughty spirit before a fall: there's no point in being proud about this,” he says, when we film in his majestic Westminster home. “The Conservative Party exists to ensure that the country is as well governed as it can be on Conservative principles.” And if those principles can be injected into a Reform government, why would it refuse?

“It's obvious why it's in the Conservative interest because we're languishing in the polls and we want to win a few seats in the next election. Why is it in Nigel's interest? I think there are two reasons. One is that Reform is very dependent on Nigel - and Nigel alone. They don't have any experience of government; what does Nigel do on day one in Downing Street? How does he run the country? If Nigel were to win, he has to be Trump two rather than Trump one. He has to be ready to go the moment he is elected, otherwise the disillusionment will be overwhelming.”

The idea of Tory governing experts may be a bit of a push after the last few years, but Mogg still sees value in them as Nigel’s consultants. But there is something else: the firm-but-unfair Westminster system may well magnify Reform support into a majority on 30pc of the vote - and give Tories almost nothing with, say, 18 per cent. But together, they’d represent almost half of public opinion. That, Rees-Mogg says, could be worth something.

“Something with Labour at the moment fascinates me, it's got a huge majority, but no mandate. What on earth am I talking about? Well, they've got a majority of 170, but because they only got 33 per cent in the election. They don't have that moral authority to push on with the radical things they want to do. They keep on having to back down, to U-turn, because although they've got the numbers, they don't have the mandate.

“If Nigel and the Conservatives were working together, you could be talking about nearly 50 per cent of the electorate between them. This provides both a majority and a mandate, which, to my mind, is what would allow you to do the radical reforms that are necessary. To help get economic growth, to reduce the size of the state, to do really what Margaret Thatcher did in 1979 when she had both a majority and a mandate.”

Another change you can notice is the tone with which Conservatives talk about Farage. Rees-Mogg is positively effusive about his fellow GB News presenter. “I think he has that great skill of understanding what the nation is concerned about. He has his finger on the pulse of the nation in a way that Tony Blair did. Both of them, at their peak, know what the nation's thinking before the nation thinks it. And both of them talk about it, highlight it, and make people feel that they are on your side.”

I also interviewed Iain Duncan Smith, a former party leader, expecting him to hold Kemi’s line, ruling out any deal in any circumstances. Instead, he told me that all coalitions are possible - at one stage, I joked that he sounds like he’d even consider being Nigel Farage’s foreign secretary. He didn’t demur.

With an election four years away, there’s not much point now speculating what they would do - although no one seriously thinks the Tories would refuse to join Reform if it meant power in a hung parliament. But the Tory tone is shifting. This time last year, they spoke as if Farage was a pest to be quashed; now, they increasingly talk as if they stand ready to be the extra inch on his shoes. Strange times indeed.